Dutton pitches suburban battler roots, calls for ‘education not indoctrination’ in campaign launch

Dutton previously sold a beachfront home on the Gold Coast for $6 million and was a beneficiary of a family trust, alongside his wife, that owned her company, RHT Investments, which ran two childcare centres. Albanese has repeatedly hinted at Dutton’s use of a trust to cast doubt on the opposition leader’s asset holdings.

Labor was quick to rubbish Dutton’s “policy-free” speech, which came days after the prime minister finished a rapid tour of northern states that he said had helped get him match fit for an election due by May but likely to be held in April.

Labor argues Dutton’s policies will lead to lower wages growth and less job security, and Albanese, in an interview with this masthead last week, derided Dutton’s small vision and relentless negativity.

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King said Dutton had “more front than Myer” and had come back from summer leave “with no solutions, no plan” and trying to “present himself as somehow the saviour of everybody”.

In his speech to supporters, Dutton declared the Liberals were “back in town” in the Labor-dominated state of Victoria, where his state colleagues recently voted to oust John Pesutto and appoint Brad Battin as leader. Battin was present at the launch along with his deputy, Sam Groth.

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Victoria has taken on new-found significance in Coalition calculations, with the party confident of winning Labor and teal seats in Aston, Chisholm, McEwen and Goldstein. It is also targeting Kooyong, Dunkley, Hawke and Bruce.

Dutton is expected to travel to the Melbourne seat of Aston on Monday with a focus on crime prevention.

Federal frontbenchers Sussan Ley, Angus Taylor, Michael Sukkar, Michaelia Cash, James Paterson and National Party leader David Littleproud were also among the attendees.

In his speech, the Liberal leader weaved his personal story and economic agenda with occasional thrusts into cultural issues, demanding “education not indoctrination” in schools and drawing arguably his biggest round of applause when he repeated his preference for one national flag rather than three with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags.

Citing the reintroduction of the cashless debit card and an audit of Indigenous spending, Dutton claimed the Coalition would focus on real solutions to fix Indigenous disadvantage rather than what he called symbolic “gestures”.

“As Jacinta Price said, it’s time to dispense with the racial stereotyping which treats all Aboriginal people the same,” he said.

He also used his speech to defend his record as health minister, in response to Labor attacks, when he attempted to institute a $7 payment to see a doctor and the health department sought to privatise the backroom payments system of Medicare.

He committed to strengthening Medicare in his speech and trumpeted his creation as health minister of a Medicare research fund.

Of Labor’s attacks, he said: “They need a new playsheet, honestly.”

In a new advertisement, Dutton pitches to disenfranchised voters expressing dismay that the bank of mum and dad is required for home ownership and arguing the economy needed to work for citizens, rather than the other way around.

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